Extrinsic Motivation: Daisy Kite Airborne Wind Turbine

Got another THP entry for ya’ll that didn’t quite make the cut, but is worth sharing. This time we are featuring an airborne wind turbine that, as the project description states, ‘can harvest strong and expansive wind safely and efficiently.’

Ram air kites spin a parachute that in turn transfers torque that can be captured on the ground. In a true hacker spirit way, the rig developed by [Rod] utilizes bike wheels and rollerblade wheels in the design. This homemade generator needs a lot of space to be deployed, but it looks like a nice solution to airborne energy harvesting. [Rod] goes over the specifications for the project throughout the build logs on the Hackaday.io page and includes a couple of video describing how it was created and showing what happens when it is released into the air currents outside. Diagrams and models of the open source airborne wind energy generation device are also included.

Below are a few of his videos. Watch them over, and let us know what you think.


SpaceWrencherThis project is an official entry to The Hackaday Prize that sadly didn’t make the quarterfinal selection. It’s still a great project, and worthy of a Hackaday post on its own.

Description Video:

Demo Video:

10 thoughts on “Extrinsic Motivation: Daisy Kite Airborne Wind Turbine

  1. Who here thinks that this idea originated over a few pints of Guinness? Anyway it does look like it could be handy for power in the field but how much juice do you actually get from this thing?

    1. If you dig around in his YouTube videos, he seems pretty serious about the concept – of course many good concepts start with good Guinness (which you can’t get here in the US, but that’s another rant for another day)

      For ad-hoc applications in the right situations this might be incredibly handy, but as a “standing” generator you’ll have to go to his bigger ideas http://youtu.be/GYVBevi2Sjg – which makes me cringe at the thought of the first sea bird to land on it.

  2. Interesting. If you could put it in a backpack to store in “the bunker” for when you need it.

    Packs away quite small. Not too heavy.

    Now all we need is someone to win that DV inverter price put out by google.

    1. It depends on altitude (degrades faster in stronger UV), but probably around a year or so. I’d be more concerned about high winds and storms though.

      I’m guessing that this current implementation is more for portable power than anything. If you wanted to go for a more permanent installation, then some materials engineering is due.

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